Ensure git can commit and prevent it from failing silently

The installation instructions omit an important step (ie. creating a ~/.gitconfig) that prevents git being able to commit. Worse, when git commit fails there would be nothing in the logs or screen to indicate such and as a knock-on effect it also prevented gitlab from being able to communicate with gitolite.

This solves #1904 and potentially others such as #1242, #1766, #1895.